Can Pickle Juice Cure a Hangover?

Shooting shilajit resin? Lemon juice in your pits? In honor of St. Patrick's Day, one of our favorite drink-y holidays, we test the weirdest hangover cures

Sprite: The Buzz You might be familiar with Sprite's curative powers if you've ever sipped it when stricken with the stomach flu. As a team of Chinese researchers found, the efficacy of lemon-lime soda in alleviating hangover symptoms may have a genuine scientific basis.

After testing 57 beverages, scientists at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou concluded that Sprite was the most effective in curbing hangover symptoms. "It is proven to speed of the breakdown of acetaldehyde, which is key to reducing alcohol-related damage," explains New York City certified dietician/nutritionist Nicolette Pace, who calls Sprite "one of the better cures for a hangover."

In Mexico, it's tripe soup. In Japan, it's salted plums. And in the United States, aka the Home of Intellectual Giants, it's rabbit poop tea. It would seem that there's no solution for "curing" a hangover that doesn't involve swallowing something totally nasty and/or inflicting additional suffering upon your wizened, wasted body. So we're here to help you sort hangover-cure fact from fiction. We consulted with Nicolette Pace, a dietician/nutritionist, and conducted our own (very unscientific) study to find out what weird hangover remedies really work. Here are the hangover cures that soothed our symptoms -- and the ones that sent us to the ninth circle of hangover hell.